It’s a good thing that, despite being named British Designer of the Year in 2006, Giles Deacon has yet to become a household name—words haven’t caught up with what he does yet. Explaining his collections for Giles to your sister or neighbor is not easy. Other designers have vision, but Deacon has visions—the kind that usually send you to a shrink or priest. Not fond of restricting himself to any one kind of unifying theme for his phantasmagorical shows, Deacon, 39, has become a kind of British Bacchus. At each show a fresh gang of camp followers emerges as if leaving a mad party, festooned with Deaconesque fancies like ribbons, shirring, graphics, fringe, and more. His Fall ’08 show—an eerily prescient ode to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death—was a crepuscular parade of gothic elegance, with whiffs of mantillas, mantises, and Metropolis (1927).
But even though his mind seems lodged in the notions district, Deacon is no fool. A graduate of Central Saint Martins who worked at Gucci and Bottega Veneta, Deacon showed his practical side with Spring ’09, focusing on lesser-known fortes, cutting the simple, sweet, and sexy dresses with just a dash of Deacon, which has already endeared him to smart-setters from Agyness Deyn to Gwyneth Paltrow.
He finds himself drawn to the strange-but-true images and stories he finds on the Internet, as well as the colorful personalities London is known for. “I love going to the British Museum to see the British home county ladies,” he says. “I love people who are eccentric, and you see really great eccentrics here.”
